Editorial: CIA abuses aren't history

By The MetroWest Daily News

Thursday

Jun 28, 2007 at 12:01 AMJun 28, 2007 at 1:21 AM

The CIA calls them "the family jewels,'' which make the documents sound like something precious. On the contrary, they are a shameful record of decades of embarrassing missteps and outrageous abuses of power by America's spies.

The CIA calls them "the family jewels,'' which make the documents sound like something precious. On the contrary, they are a shameful record of decades of embarrassing missteps and outrageous abuses of power by America's spies.

The documents, released this week, provide new details on CIA activities in the 1960s and 1970s, many of them previously uncovered. They tell of assassination plots, both successful and not, of domestic wiretapping operations, the infiltration of antiwar groups and mind control experiments.

From this distance documents can seem comical, but nonetheless disturbing. The CIA partnered with the mafia in repeated attempts to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro, and the mafia expected favors in return. Thus, we had CIA agents bugging the hotel room of comedian Dan Rowan to determine if the "Laugh-in'' star was sleeping with a mob boss's girlfriend. As John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy - who approved the attempts on Castro's life - and the nation soon learned, assassination is no laughing matter.

The CIA released the documents - which remain heavily censored, indicating there are still some sins officials don't want to confess - in an attempt to score points for candor.

"I firmly believe that the improved system of intelligence oversight that came out of the
1970s gives the CIA a far stronger place in our democratic system,'' CIA director Michael Hayden said in releasing the documents.

He should tell that to a judge in Italy, where 25 CIA agents are being tried in absentia, charged with kidnapping an Egyptian cleric. The trial, now recessed until October pending the appeal of a ruling, is a test of the agency's "extraordinary rendition program.'' He should ask the more than 100 terror suspects held since 2002 in the CIA's secret prisons overseas, subjected to interrogation techniques often described as torture.

The incidents of domestic surveillance described in the family jewels documents are dwarfed by the electronic surveillance program currently operating under the National Security Agency. There are also intelligence operations being run out of the Pentagon for which there is less oversight than for CIA operations.

The family jewels papers are lively reading, important to policy-makers as well as historians. But it's not what the CIA was doing 30 years ago that truly merits our attention. It is what the spies are up to now.

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